Commander in Chief Inaugural Edition, Part 1
September 2006 Reviewed by: Charlotte Meyer Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

In the ABC TV series Commander in Chief, a Republican president has a stroke and on his deathbed orders his vice president to resign. Why? Because she’s a woman! He had selected her as his vice president only to win the soccer-mom vote. She is Mackenzie Allen (Geena Davis), a former university chancellor and a political independent, free of party ties. She might have turned in her resignation, if only Nate Templeton (Donald Sutherland), Speaker of the House and next in line for the presidency, hadn’t been so condescending and sexist when he tried to coerce it from her. Instead, she takes the oath of office and moves her husband and young family into the White House. And so this compelling series begins.

It is delicious to watch Allen assert her leadership and manage her enemies, Sutherland’s character first among them. She fires and hires staff decisively. She enters the Situation Room, where the military high command tries to cow her, and coolly commands their respect. In the press room she faces the hungry wolf pack who’ve heard a leak that the dying president had demanded her resignation. "He had no right to ask that of me," she declares simply, quickly defusing the controversy.

Geena Davis is superb in the role and won a Golden Globe for it. She must have studied the affect and bearing of women in power, because she is completely credible as president. Some have said that her role is softening the ground for Hillary Clinton’s run for the presidency. In her refusal to operate with politics always forefront, President Allen could well serve as model for Clinton.

Commander in Chief is sometimes compared to West Wing, but the titles indicate the difference. In West Wing, the Martin Sheen character gets perhaps 20% of screen time. Geena Davis typically has 80%. Her series focuses on the issues involved in a woman’s presidency, and the issues among the West Wing staff all revolve around her.

Less satisfying is the family dynamic behind the scenes. The First Gentleman (Kyle Secor), for example, is humiliated by that title and jousts all too predictably with his wife’s Chief of Staff (Harry J. Lennix). Steve Bochco (NYPD Blue), who took over artistic control of the series midway, has been accused of flattening characterization. The twins, Horace (Matt Lanter) and Rebecca (Caitlin Wachs), have typical teenage crises that seem trivial alongside the gripping matters of state. As little sister Amy, the actress Jasmine Anthony is too studied in her naivete, coming across as too cute. Nevertheless, threading in all these characters enriches the story.

Commander in Chief earned great critical reviews and a large devoted audience, yet ABC inexplicably cancelled it after 18 episodes. This two-disc DVD, called Inaugural Edition, Part 1, contains the first ten episodes and ends in the middle of a two-episode sequence. Regrettably, it is without featurettes.

Commander in Chief was an expensive series with high production values: a large cast, good audio, beautiful shots of White House interiors and of Washington at night. But best of all, the series made it seem credible that a woman could be president and possible that a president could be incorruptible.

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